News

News from April 2004

According to IMDb.com , there is now a hint of a plot available for Advent Children, the DVD only sequel to FF7. From the site itself:

"Plot Outline: Two years after Cloud & Co. saved the world from Sephiroth, the citizens of the planet begin suffering from a strange sickness called Seikon-Shoukougun. Meanwhile, Cloud has secluded himself, and is being haunted by demons in his past." (IMDb.com)

There are more plot details on the site itself, as well as Japanese voice actors.

According to RPGamer, Nintendo has reportedly asked Square Enix to produce a new version of Final Fantasy III for the Game Boy Advance. As the story suggests, Final Fantasy III hasn't seen the light of day since the original Famicom release - the Wonderswan Color version was badly hampered by the premature demise of the system.

Final Fantasy III has never been released in the United States. However, if there's a GBA version done in Japan, there's very little stopping it from coming here. The GBA, unlike the WSC, has brand identity and a stranglehold on the portable gaming market. Given the massive brand appeal of the Final Fantasy franchise and the novelty of the particular title, it seems reasonable that we could finally have a full official translation of this poor forgotten game sooner than we thought.

Full Metal Alchemist, an excellent anime by Square Enix that has not yet been licenced outside of Japan, has another game based off of it for the GameBoy Advanced.

Although release dates are only set for Japan as of yet, for this summer, it will hopefully come to this continent not long after that.

There are 12 new screenshots courtesy of RPGamer that look promising, showing mostly battle scenes. This game and anime may not be as well known as, say, the Final Fantasy series, but it is definitely worth the attention as a Square Enix game.

The first is that a sequel to Paper Mario has finally been confirmed. The game is being developed by Intelligent Systems, the Nintendo in-house team that developed the original title.

The sequel will retain the unique art style of the original: "paper thin" sprites in a fully 3D world. There is no set release date as of yet for the title. One might recognize the Intelligent Systems label as it has been the force behind such titles as Donkey Kong, Excitebike, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Tetris Attack, Super Metroid and the Fire Emblem series.

The second scrumptious tidbit of the day involves money and not an actual game. More concretely, it is that Microsoft has lowered the price of the Xbox to $149.99. The drop places it in the middle for lowest price of the three major consoles.

This might make the console more appealing to gamers recently leaning towards purchasing a Gamecube instead because of its much lower price point of $99.99